My fiancée and I just began renting a condominium in Central Florida. We are thrilled to have found a bargain in a great community, but the old 1980s kitchen we are inheriting as tenants of this condo has us feeling like we are living in a time capsule direct from the decade of our births.
Our condo was built in 1982, and – let me tell you – this place leaves many clues that it was built in the early 1980s:
Brass lighting fixtures with smoked glass globe lighting
Dark gray HVAC register … [Read more...]

Spring is in the air, and we all know what that means: weeds are in full flourish.
Normally, I would just take a couple hours once every weekend and proceed to stoop down and yank these weeds out while tending to my housekeeping duties. This year, though, I've decided to try something different: a natural weed killer.
Why did it take me this long to abandon the back-grinding ritual of pulling weeds by hand?
Honestly, I don't know! But what I do know is that I didn't care to spray weed … [Read more...]

With the ongoing financial recession, along with the global warming, my husband and I decided that it was time for a drastic change. A change for good -- for the good of us as a family, as well as to contribute to the whole Earth's well being.
We have always been eco-conscious, not wasting energy, recycling, etc. However, when living in the big city started getting a bit too tough in terms of bills and pollution, we decided that it was high time we did something.
Remodeling our current … [Read more...]

Remember when telephone poles had colorful glass insulators atop their cross arms?
These days, most telephone poles have either silicone or ceramic insulators, and many people are recycling the obsolete glass insulators as communications and power companies continue updating aging lines.
Old insulators, which are bell shaped and used to suspend phone lines and power lines from supporting poles, have long been a popular item to collect -- especially among many who grew up seeing vivid … [Read more...]

Let's face the facts – you are more or less dealing with utility bills that you'd love to see lowered.
Thanks to remodeling opportunities, you might have a chance to make things better in terms of efficiency and saving money.
The first thing to remember is that your home is a system which operates based on how you have it set up.
Some of the remodeling you do will affect the way the house looks, with little to no effect on the overall quality of energy efficiency.
However, in order … [Read more...]

Green living extends to our daily shower habits.
If you think about it, we use a lot of water and other resources when we take a shower each day.
In fact, roughly 25% of indoor household water consumption goes to bathing:
A 10-minute shower uses about 40 gallons.
A bath takes around 37 gallons.
I never even realized just how much water I was using bathing and showering until I took an environmental studies course when I was in college.
So, as it would seem, living a green … [Read more...]

Energy efficiency holds huge potential when it comes to being better stewards of the environment and stopping climate change (well, human-caused, extremely rapid and destructive climate change, that is).
It could also help us save money. Reportedly, the U.S. could save $700 billions dollars with some energy efficiency improvements.
How much time do we spend thinking about energy and these potential savings, though? The average American spends about 6 minutes per year doing so, according to … [Read more...]

Americans love solar power, really.
Nearly every poll concerning the matter shows tremendous support for solar power across the United States, across political preferences, and so on. No, unfortunately, that hasn’t translated into a lot of solar power use yet. (But we’re getting there -- solar power growth has been tremendous in the last decade or so.)
Now, when you think of going solar, you think of doing so on your own, right? But that one person at a time thing is sort of slow, and … [Read more...]

Solar power refers to the production of electricity by utilizing sunlight.
Solar power has 2 main advantages:
It produces electricity in a renewable way that doesn’t damage the earth;
And once the installation has been completed, power is generated free of charge.
Its main disadvantage is that the initial installation can be very costly. … [Read more...]

Going green is often portrayed as requiring sacrifice and it’s even considered in many cases that it requires monetary sacrifice. But going green, in essence, is about using resources more wisely and efficiently.
Doing so, either through your habits and actions or through the technology and appliances you use, often actually means financial savings.
Here’s a list of 5 ways to green your home and save money from doing so (starting with the smaller actions and moving towards the bigger ones … [Read more...]